Ember Corporation today announced that the industry’s lowest power ZigBee™ networking platform, which it developed jointly with Texas Instruments Inc. will start shipping next month. ZigBee is a wireless, standards-based radio technology designed for remote monitoring, control and sensor network applications including home control and awareness, building automation, industrial automation, asset management and Homeland Security.
Ember also announced that customers have already attended training at Ember to get an early start in the development of wireless applications based on the new platform, which is currently undergoing final quality assurance testing. These include a sensor application being developed by a U.S. government defense agency, and a wireless, wearable, non-intrusive monitor for the healthcare and eldercare markets being developed by AFrame Digital, a Virginia based healthcare products and technology company.
“AFrame is excited to move to the Ember TI MSP430 Development Kit because this new chip combination will significantly increase the battery lifespan of our product in its small form factor,” said Linda Bonanno, CTO and EVP of engineering at AFrame Digital. “Ember has developed a best in class low-power ZigBee solution that AFrame can leverage for our healthcare monitoring solution for the eldercare and chronic disease management markets.”
The new ZigBee platform integrates Ember’s proven and ZigBee compliant EM2420 radio transceiver, and EmberZNet software platform with TI’s 16-bit MSP430F1612 microcontroller (MCU) into a complete, dual-chip ZigBee/802.15.4 solution. It is designed for OEMs building ZigBee applications that require the lowest possible power requirements, as well as for companies who have already standardized on the TI MCU and wish to ZigBee-enable their products quickly and easily.
The 2.4 GHz Ember EM2420 is the highest performing, most power-efficient radio transceiver in its class, providing a flexible, simple interface to a wide range of microcontrollers. The low power TI MCU will also be paired with Ember’s recently announced EM260, network processor solution which will be available early next year.
The MSP430F1612 ultra-low-power MCU offers the industry’s lowest current consumption with only 1.1 micro-amps standby mode with real-time clock operation, as well as a 300 micro-amps (1 MHz) active mode that allows engineers to tune system clocking to meet precise power requirements. With fast instruction execution enabled by a modern 16-bit RISC CPU, a start-up time of less than six microseconds from standby and a fully synchronized, high-speed system clock, the chip’s total power consumption is 10 times lower than competing devices.
Customers can quickly start building ZigBee applications with Ember’s Developer Kit that includes all the hardware, development tools, and software needed to prototype robust, decentralized device networks using the new Ember/TI chipset. The kit can be ordered from Ember’s Web site at www.ember.com/buy_index.html; starting at $4,995 for the JumpStart Kit and $13,950 for the Full Developer Kit.
About ZigBee: Wireless Control That Simply Works
The ZigBee Alliance is an association of companies working together to enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly networked, monitoring and control products based on an open global standard. The ZigBee Alliance is a rapidly growing, non-profit industry consortium of leading semiconductor manufacturers, technology providers, OEMs, and end-users worldwide. Membership is open to all. Additional information can be found at www.zigbee.org.
About Ember Corporation
Ember Corporation develops ZigBee-compliant wireless semiconductor solutions that help automate homes, make buildings consume less energy, enable manufacturing plants to run with fewer breakdowns, and keep the country’s borders and infrastructure safe and secure. With more than 120 customers, Ember’s vision is to help create an “Internet of things” by enabling the eight billion microcontrollers built into products each year to support low-cost, low-power networking applications in any industry. Headquartered in Boston with offices and distributors worldwide, the company is a lead promoter of the ZigBee Alliance and its platform is the National Technical Systems’ (NTS) “Golden Suite” for 802.15.4/ZigBee interoperability testing. For more information, please visit www.ember.com.
